Donate today to power up the free software movement!

We did it! The Free Software Foundation (FSF) had another successful winter fundraiser this year. For us, 2017 ended on a high note, by blowing past our fundraising goal of $450,000 (USD). Thanks to your generosity, we have raised over $500,000 to power up the FSF and support software freedom in 2018.

The Free Software Foundation's work is driven by the four
freedoms that define free software and set it apart from
proprietary software. The FSF's supporters are the key to embedding
freedom in the software that powers devices across the world. We've
come a long way in 2017, but in order to keep our momentum going into
2018, we've set a year-end goal of 700 new members and $450,000 in
donations. Our mission to promote user freedom and defend the rights
of all software users grows more important every day, as the use of
software expands into every appliance and every aspect of our lives.

The thirteen people who make up the staff of the FSF work hard to
serve and grow the free software community -- and over 80% of our
annual budget comes from individuals like you. So at the end of each
year, we reach out to you to support the FSF's work. You can make a
huge impact on our ability to promote free software, no matter how
much you are able to contribute.

Thanks to our supporters, we have been able to make huge strides down
that path in the past year. Here are a few highlights:

The Licensing and Compliance team hit a milestone with the Respects
Your Freedom certification program, doubling the number of
RYF-certified products this year.

Our Licensing and Compliance team has also highlighted the benefits
of copyleft and celebrated the tenth anniversary of the GPLv3
with a series of interviews with developers who choose GNU
licenses. There are now 37 interviews in the series, including a
conversation with a team within the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Licensing and Compliance team successfully resolved 4 GPL
compliance cases, and answered over 500 licensing questions from the
community.

The FSF tech team completed major hardware and software upgrades,
including replacing a sixteen-year-old server with an RYF-certified
server running an ASUS KGPE-D16 motherboard, with Libreboot and
Trisquel. The FSF's free software infrastructure includes the GNU
Project's Savannah servers, as well as improved mail servers hosting
over three thousand mailing lists for hundreds of free software
projects. There have been 191 GNU package releases so far this year!

The campaigns team also rallied free software activists in defense
of user freedom, including resisting the erosion of Internet
privacy and net neutrality protections in the US and
beyond. And the number of free software activists is growing: the
FSF's Free Software Supporter mailing list has grown by 43% since
the beginning of the year.

Though the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published Encrypted Media
Extensions (EME) as an official Web recommendation in September,
endorsing Digital Restrictions Management on the Internet, it came
with a heavy cost. A third of W3C members disapproved of the
decision, and the FSF's Defective by Design campaign raised the
volume on public opposition to EME. We may have lost this particular
fight -- for now -- but we succeeded in saying loud and clear that
embracing DRM is never a good look and are actively working on next
steps to undo the damage.

LibrePlanet - the FSF's annual free software conference -- entered
its ninth year, with more than 350 people attending, 53 speakers,
and thousands watching via livestream and viewing archived
recordings of the proceedings.

What if, instead of proprietary embedded systems in our homes, our
bodies, our workplaces, and our public institutions, we were able to
encourage enough people to demand software freedom that the four
freedoms were embedded in our world? Your support gets us
closer.

You can become an FSF member for just $10/month ($5/month for
students). When you join, you'll get many benefits, including a
bootable USB membership card loaded with the FSF-endorsed GNU/Linux
distribution Trisquel, a digital
member button, member.fsf.org email aliases and Jabber instant
messaging, gratis admission to the annual LibrePlanet conference, a
20% discount on all purchases in the FSF shop, a printed copy of the
biannual FSF Bulletin, 5% off hardware from ThinkPenguin, and more!
And remember, all new and renewing members between now and December
31st may opt to receive a new FSF Four Freedoms t-shirt as a thank you
for their membership. You can trust that your donations will be used
efficiently: our Charity Navigator rating is four out of four stars,
with a score of 100% on accountability and transparency, and 99.4% on
financial management. We use all free software in our operations,
demonstrating that no nonprofit requires proprietary software in order
to excel.

We're settling into our fourth decade, but we have so much more to
do. If we're to embed software freedom in the world, we need your
dedication and generosity powering us up.

P.S. Your employer may match your charitable donations, and the FSF
generally qualifies for these matches. Our EIN is 042888848. US
federal employees can support the FSF through the Combined Federal
Campaign. Our CFC ID is 63210, and you can pledge until January
12, 2018 for the current campaign period.